Douglas Preston - Brimstone

The flowery aroma and the warmth of the liquid soon calmed her. Life was too short to allow oneself to be disturbed longer than necessary. It was now quiet as a tomb in the apartment above. No matter: she would take strong measures to ensure she wasn't awakened like this again.

She heard a faint noise and listened. A faint pattering. Raining again, it seemed. She would have to remember the Burberry when she went out that morning to .

The pattering grew louder. And now there was a smell like frying bacon in the air, faint but distinct. Like the rain, it grew steadily stronger. It was not a pleasant smell, either: it was repellent, like burnt meat. She sniffed, looking around. Had she left the stove on? Impossible, she hadn't even-

Plop! A huge greasy drop landed in the middle of her tea, splashing her. Then another fat drop, and another, splattering tea all over her face, her dressing gown, her beautiful satin puff.

She looked up in horror to see a stain on her bedroom ceiling. It was spreading fast. It glistened, oleaginous, in the dim light of her reading lamp.

Letitia Dallbridge snatched the phone out of its cradle, buzzed downstairs again.

"Yes, Mrs. Dallbridge?"

"Now there's a leak from the apartment above! It's coming right through the ceiling of my bedroom!"

"We're sending someone up immediately. We'll turn the water off in that apartment now."

"This is an outrage! My beautiful English puff is ruined! Ruined! "

Now the liquid was pattering down from the ceiling in several places, accumulating in the corners of the crown molding, even streaming down the Venetian chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. It was raining on her Louis Quinze chairs, the Chippendale highboy. Against her better judgment, she leaned forward and touched one of the brown splatters on the china cup with her finger. It was warm and greasy, like tallow or candle wax. She shrank in horror.

"It's not water," she cried. "It's some kind of grease !"

"Grease?"

"Yes! Grease! From the apartment above!"

There was some confused talk in the background, then the voice came back on, a little breathless. "We're getting some alarms down here. It seems there may be a fire in the apartment above you, Mrs. Dallbridge. Listen carefully. Don't leave your apartment. If smoke begins to come under your front door, place a damp towel against it. Wait for instructions-"

The voice was cut off by the unbearably shrill sound of the fire alarm in the hall, followed by the even louder blare of the siren within her apartment. She dropped the phone, covering her ears. A moment later there was a snapping noise as the sprinklers went off, and suddenly the room was full of water, streaming everywhere.

Mrs. Dallbridge was in such a state of shock that she remained frozen as a statue, uncomprehending, while the spray slowly darkened her gown and her lovely bedspread and refilled the teacup on her tray with gray, chill water.

{ 21 }

The stench hanging in the apartment entrance helped warn D'Agosta what was in store. It only grew worse as he walked through the dwelling on his way to the master bedroom. He'd been half asleep when he entered the building's lobby-filling out the incident report on the gunfire he'd exchanged in Riverside Park had taken longer than expected-but he sure as hell wasn't asleep now. It was amazing the way that stench just cut through everything: took away the 2A.M. grogginess, took away the aches in his joints, the pain of the skinned knees, the itch of the poison ivy he'd managed to roll through while evading the thugs.

He had seen a lot of unpleasant homicides in his day, but nothing could have prepared him for what lay on the floor beside the bed. It was a corpse, that much at least was clear: it had ruptured in a way he'd never seen before, the corpse unzipping itself from pubis to sternum, vomiting a shrunken tangle of burned and blackened organs. In an almost unconscious gesture, he reached up and touched the cross underneath his shirt, feeling its reassuring presence. If there was a devil, this was how he'd do it. This was definitely how he'd do it.

He glanced over at Pendergast and felt faintly gratified to see that even the great detective was looking whiter than usual. Pendergast's normal impulses to poke, pry, and sniff seemed to have deserted him. He stood there, dressed in white tie and tails, something almost like shock on his face.

The last of the SOC boys-the fingernail picker-came back around the corpse on his hands and knees, bristling with test tubes and tweezers and swabs. He looked pretty green, too, and those guys were a tough bunch. They were the ones who had to find the fibers and hairs, swab stains, pick up all the bits and pieces. Close-in work, real close.

The M.E. ducked in. "Finished?"

"I sure hope so."

Pendergast held out his shield. "Mind if I ask a few questions, Doctor?"

"Shoot."

"Do you have a cause of death?"

"Not yet. Heating, burning , is clear. But as for the cause . I have no idea."

"Accelerants?"

"Negative, at least prelim," the SOC man answered. "There are other anomalies. Note the lack of the pugilistic effect-there's none of the contraction of the arm muscles one usually sees in such severe burn cases. Note also the heat fracturing in the bones of the extremities. Nearer the center of the body, the bones have actually been calcined. Do you have any idea how hot a fire would have to be to cause this kind of damage? Well over the combustion threshold. And yet there was no room flashover. In fact, from the look of things, the fire never even approached flashover. The heat was localized to the body, and the body only."

"What kind of heat was applied?"

The doctor shook his head. "No idea yet."

"Spontaneous combustion?"

The doctor looked up sharply. "You mean, like Mary Reeser?"

"You know of that case, Doctor?"

"It's kind of a legend in medical school. A joke, really. I seem to recall the FBI handled it."

"Yes. And if the case file can be believed, SHC-spontaneous human combustion, as it's referred to-is far from being a joke."

The doctor gave a low, cynical laugh. "You FBI fellows and your acronyms. I don't believe you'll find 'SHC' in the Merck Manual , Mr. Pendergast."

"There is more in the world than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Doctor-or in the Merck Manual . I will send over the case file for your perusal."

"As you wish." The doctor departed with the SOC man, leaving them alone with the body.

D'Agosta removed his notebook and pen. Nothing was coming into his head, but he needed a way to take his eyes off the scene, and this was it. He roused himself and wrote, October 23, 2:20 a.m., 842 Fifth Avenue, Apt. 17B, Cutforth. The pen faltered as he tried to breathe only through his mouth. From now on, he was going to carry a jar of Vicks VapoRub with him always. On dates. On vacation. Out for bowling. Always.

He heard murmured voices in the living room: detectives from Homicide. They'd been interviewing a maintenance worker outside the hall-away from the stench-and D'Agosta had been thankful to duck past them on entering the apartment. He didn't want any of his old pals seeing him with the Southampton P.D. patch and sergeant stripes on his shoulder.

His gaze focused back on the page of his notebook. His mind wasn't working. He gave up and raised his eyes.

Pendergast seemed to have overcome his revulsion and was now on his hands and knees, examining the corpse. Like the SOC guy, he had a glass test tube and a pair of tweezers in his hands-where did he keep all that stuff in such a narrow-tailored suit?-and was putting something into it, moving around with great care. Then he moved toward a wall, where he stopped to examine a scorched area with a magnifying glass. He spent so much time staring at it that D'Agosta began to stare, too. The paint of the scorched patch was browned and bubbled. There was no hoofprint that he could see, but as he stared a creeping sensation began to tickle its way up his spine and dig into his scalp. It was blurry, indistinct, but-damn-was it just like those inkblot tests, all in his mind?